The subject matter disclosed herein relates generally to hand hygiene compliance (HHC), and particularly to tracking and encouraging worker compliance with hand hygiene protocols. In a hospital setting, hospital associated infections (HAIs) may cause undue illness to patients. One way of decreasing the number of HAIs is for hospital workers to wash their hands at key phases of patient care. In an effort to reduce the number of HAIs, hospitals have implemented hand hygiene protocols for hospital staff. For example, staff at a hospital may be instructed to wash their hands when they enter a patient room, before any patient contact, before an aseptic task, after body fluid exposure risk, after patient contact, after contact with patient surroundings, and upon exiting the patient room.
Hospitals have a variety of techniques for reminding workers to follow hand hygiene protocols and for tracking worker compliance with hand hygiene protocols. One method of reminding workers to follow hand hygiene protocols is to send a signal (e.g., an audio or visual reminder) to the health care worker (HCW) when the HCW enters or exits a patient's room. This method works well when hand hygiene requirements are the same for all patients and when the requirements are associated with a HCW being at a particular location. This method does not work well when hand hygiene requirements differ across patients, when the requirements differ based on a particular path taken by the HCW, and/or they differ based on an amount of time spent by the HCW at a particular location (e.g., next to the patient's bed). One method of tracking hand hygiene compliance (HHC) is to use “secret shoppers” to watch the staff to see if they are following the protocol. The secret shoppers may remind the HCWs and/or they may report on compliance. One drawback to the use of secret shoppers is that knowledge of the secret shoppers can cause an artificial spike in hand hygiene compliance, because the workers know that they are being watched.
Accordingly, and while existing HHC systems may be suitable for their intended purpose, there remains a need in the art for HHC systems that overcome these drawbacks.
This background information is provided to reveal information believed by the applicant to be of possible relevance to the present invention. No admission is necessarily intended, nor should be construed, that any of the preceding information constitutes prior art against the present invention.